We’re right on the heels of our weekend long 1-year anniversary, and to kick off the weekend, I thought I’d share some game library updates. I’ve added a bunch of games to the library for everyone to enjoy and I’d like to see them get some love this weekend! There are also a bunch of games that I’ve added that haven’t seen any play, so when you arrive tomorrow, check out the “Meeple Features” board and grab one of the awesome games we curated for you.

I also added some new stock, including:

Nations: The Dice Game

Star Realms Gambit cards

Dead Man’s Draw

Ticket to Ride (and TTR Europe)

Disc Duelers

Alchemists

Survive:Escape From Atlantis

Belfort

Gates of Loyang

Aquasphere

and many many more, plus select titles will be marked down even more than usual!!

New in our game library this month:

Bring Out Yer Dead is a morbid game of grave family plots.As the head of your family, you must get the “dying” members of your family into the best plots in the city’s newest cemetery. Each day the Grave Keeper brings the cart around the city and you must vie to get your family members in the cart before other families do. But be careful! The Grave Keeper is a lazy guy and any coffins he can’t fit in the cart are tossed aside in the river; he’ll never bother to bury them at all!Get your recently departed family members buried in the best plots in the cemetery to gain influence in the city. You may even have to resort to some early morning grave swapping — or you could just rob the graves of all the jewelry you can dig up…it isn’t like they’re going to need it anyway! Influence is everything! The player with the most influence at the end of the game wins.

Nations: The Dice Game is a game for 1-4 players that takes 10-15 minutes per player and shares many concepts with the civilization-building game Nationswhile still offering its own challenges. The game is played over four ages (four rounds). During each round, players take turns until all have passed. The available actions are:

Buy a tile

Build a wonder

Reroll some or all your dice

Buildings and military provide dice. Colonies and wonders provide resources and victory points. Advisors provide rerolls. New tiles provide benefits immediately, so you can roll new dice at once.

At the end of each round, War and Famine drawn at the start of the round is checked for each player, giving you victory points if you match or beat the values. Books are accumulated and scored. Player order is checked, with high military strength going first in the next round. At the end of the game, whoever has the most victory points wins.

Dead Man’s Draw is a simple and strategic card game of risk and reward for 2 to 4 players. Players take turns drawing cards and combining their special abilities to plunder the most loot without busting their entire hands.The core of your turn in Dead Man’s Draw is all in the flip: pulling the top card off the deck and using its special ability. Your turn isn’t over until you say it is, though. You can keep pulling cards as long as you like – until you play a card of a suit already seen, at which point you lose everything. Knowing when to stop and “bank” your cards is the biggest decision you make in Dead Man’s Draw, but being too timid lets braver opponents pass you up with bigger, more profitable turns.The cards’ special abilities are key to success in Dead Man’s Draw, and they build off of each other. Each suit in DMD has an effect that the player can target when they flip a card of that suit.

Anchor – Keep everything you drew before the Anchor even if you bust.

Cannon – Destroy one card an opponent has previously banked.

Chest – Double your haul by banking as many cards directly from the discard pile as are in the river when you bank the Chest – but only if you also bank a Key.

Hook – Play one of your previously banked cards.

Key – Enables the Chest special.

Kraken – Oh no! You’re forced to draw at least two more cards.

Map – Draw three cards from the discard pile and play one.

Mermaid – No ability, but worth more points (Mermaids are numbered 4-9 instead of 2-7).

Oracle – Look at the next card before deciding if you want to play it.

Sword – Steal an opponent’s previously banked card and play it.

Many of these work well together, like using a Hook to re-play a Sword from your hand to steal an opponent’s Chest to go with your Key – racking up huge points by playing abilities well and not solely through the luck of the draw.

As soon as the deck is depleted, players total up the value of the highest card they’ve banked from each suit. High score wins.

Alchemists, two to four budding alchemists compete to discover the secrets of their mystical art. Points can be earned in various ways, but most points are earned by publishing theories – correct theories, that is — and therein lies the problem.The game is played in six rounds. At the beginning of the round, players choose their play order. Those who choose to play later get more rewards.Players declare all their actions by placing cubes on the various action spaces, then each action space is evaluated in order. Players gain knowledge by mixing ingredients and testing the results using a smartphone app (iOS, Android, and also Windows) that randomizes the rules of alchemy for each new game. And if the alchemists are longing for something even more special, they can always buy magical artifacts to get an extra push. There are 9 of them (different for each game) and they are not only very powerful, but also very expensive. But money means nothing, when there’s academic pride at stake! And the possession of these artifacts will definitely earn you some reputation too. Players can also earn money by selling potions of questionable quality to adventurers, but money is just a means to an end. The alchemists don’t want riches, after all. They want respect, and respect usually comes from publishing theories.During play, players’ reputations will go up and down. After six rounds and a final exhibition, reputation will be converted into points. Points will also be scored for artifacts and grants. Then the secrets of alchemy are revealed and players score points or lose points based on whether their theories were correct. Whoever has the most points at the end of the game wins.

Flavor text:Mandrake root and scorpion tail; spongy mushroom and warty toad — these are the foundations of the alchemist’s livelihood, science, and art.

But what arcane secrets do these strange ingredients hide? Now it is time to find out. Mix them into potions and drink them to determine their effects — or play it safe and test the concoction on a helpful assistant! Gain riches selling potions to wandering adventurers and invest these riches in powerful artifacts. As your knowledge grows, so will your reputation, as you publish your theories for all to see. Knowledge, wealth, and fame can all be found in the murky depths of the alchemist’s cauldron.

At the Gates of Loyang: is a trading game in which you are able to produce goods by planting them and later selling them to customers. You can use the abilities of some helpers to increase your income or production.Fields, customers, helpers, and miscellaneous objects are represented by cards. Each player receives two of these cards per round distributed by a bidding/drawing mechanism in which you end up with one of the cards you draw and one of the cards of a public offer filled by all players. Additionally, to these cards you always receive one field for free each round.Placing one good on a field fills the complete field with goods of this type. Each round, one unit per field is harvested. After planting, harvesting, and distributing cards, each player can use as many actions as he wants, only limited by the number of his cards or the number of goods he owns. At the end of his turn, he can invest the earned money on a scoring track, where early money is worth more than late money. The game ends after a certain number of rounds, and the player who is first on the scoring track wins.

Belfort: Welcome to the Tasty Minstrel universe! Put your Elves, Dwarves and Gnomes to work in the Village and Guilds of Belfort to collect resources and build up the city!Elves collect wood from the forest while Dwarves collect stone from the quarry. An Elf and a Dwarf together can collect Metal from the mines, and either one can collect Gold. Build buildings in the five districts of the pentagonal city and hire Gnomes to run them to gain their special abilities.Belfort is a worker placement game with area majority scoring in each district as well as for each type of worker. Buildings give you influence in the districts as well as income, but taxes increase based on your score so the winning players will have to pay more than those behind! Manage your resources and gold well, choose your buildings wisely, and help build the city of Belfort!

Love Letter: Batman is a game of risk, deduction, and luck for 2–4 players based on the original Love Letter game by Seiji Kanai. The deck consists mostly of criminals, with Joker being the most valuable card at #8, Harley Quinn at #7, and so on, with Robin showing up at #4 and Batman as #1, which is the guard in the original Love Letter. Your goal is either to hold — that is, have captured — the highest valued card at the end of the round or to be the final player active in the round.From a deck with only sixteen cards, each player starts with only one card in hand; one card is removed from play. On a turn, you draw one card, and play one card, using the power on that card to expose others and (possibly) knock them out of the round. If you use Batman’s ability to KO someone (other than Robin), you score one point, with points being tracked via Batsignal tokens. If you’re the final player active in the round or the player with the highest card when the deck runs out, then you score a point.The game ends following the round in which someone has seven or more points, and the player with the most points wins.